Advocates Take the Bullhorn: New resources on AVAC.org

In case you missed it, AVAC has a number of new resources to support our collective advocacy for HIV prevention research and an equitable, evidence-based response to COVID-19.

HIV Advocates Demand an Ethical Response to COVID-19

• To accelerate search for COVID-19 vaccine, look to HIV and act globally, this commentary in Devex by AVAC’s Mitchell Warren calls for vaccine development and a response to COVID-19 driven by public health, engaged communities and global collaboration, not nationalism.
• In a live chat with aidsmap, AVAC Fellow Winifred Ikilai makes the case for Good Participatory Practice in COVID-19 vaccine development and delivery.
• HIV Advocates Respond to the COVID-19 Crisis - On USAID’s blog, the CASPR Coalition writes about the role HIV advocates must play so that resources and networks empower communities responding to COVID-19.
• COVID-19, Yes but HIV Needs Attention Too - In this article in Malawi’s Times newspaper, 2019 AVAC Fellow Josephine Chinele, from the Pakachere Institute for Health and Development Communication, exhorts leaders to safeguard gains in HIV while tackling COVID-19.
• Ethical Conduct of SARS-CoV-2 Vaccine Challenge Studies - AVAC and TAG respond to the call for human challenge studies in vaccine research–The WHO Working Group has articulated important criteria for assessing a challenge study, but we believe that they left out the most important one: Until there is an approved treatment, a challenge trial with a potentially fatal and as-yet untreatable pathogen is unacceptable.
• How COVID-19 Must Transform US Global Health Strategy - Writing in The Hill, AVAC Executive Director Mitchell Warren and President of Friends of the Global Fight Against AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria Chris Collins challenge us not just to survive this crisis but to seize this moment and begin work on a more sustainable future–one in which the next global pandemics land in a more prepared, more secure and healthier world.
• A look at the pipeline: COVID-19 diagnostics, therapeutics and a potential vaccine. This document also links to a number of additional resources tracking these developments.

Unprecedented focus on vaccine development for COVID-19 put a new perspective on HIV Vaccine Awareness Day (HVAD) on May 18.

There’s never been more at stake or more opportunity to build global capacity to ethically develop and deliver vaccines, which are essential to eventually end HIV and face future epidemics.

• HIV Vaccines: Are You Aware? - This op-ed placed in Zambia’s Daily Mail Limited 2020 AVAC Fellow Esnart Sikazindu spells out why continued investment in HIV vaccine research is essential.
• AVAC’s new report, Five “P”s to Watch: Platforms, process, partnerships, payers and participatory practices that drive vaccine development, connects key issues and lays out how HIV vaccine research is making the search for a COVID-19 vaccine faster, smarter and more inclusive.
• AVAC’s latest podcast episode of Px Pulse features leading voices from HIV vaccine and prevention research talking about the intersection of HIV and COVID-19.
• Check out key messages on priorities and unique opportunities for vaccine advocacy for HIV, COVID-19 and future epidemics.